From: David Masover <ninja@...>
Date: 2008-08-07T09:50:07+09:00
Subject: Re: perl and the culture of libraries

On Wednesday 06 August 2008 10:31:51 Shadowfirebird wrote:
> > And I agree. The trick is, how do we embarrass people into writing that
> > English? We can't force them to, and we can't simply ignore their library
> > (how would they know?) -- my favorite idea so far is to drag them into the
> > cold, harsh light of crowd review, and allow ratings and reviews on
> > Rubyforge.
> 
> Well, you can't force them; this is the *internet*.

If they are on a public system, like Rubyforge, and the admins of Rubyforge 
(Tom?) decide to include a rating feature, then yes, you've effectively 
forced them.

Or, more accurately, they can't force you to stop writing bad reviews.
At that point, they have three options:
 - Ignore the reviews (but it's unlikely anyone will want to use their gem)
 - Fix their library, so people start giving it good reviews
 - Remove their library from the public system (again, reducing their 
potential users)

Right now, I have no way of knowing the consensus on a given gem or plugin, 
short of word-of-mouth and actually doing the research myself.